


Coming Home

by lovetincture



Series: The Shape of Light [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Marijuana, Stanford Era (Supernatural)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:07:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25455160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovetincture/pseuds/lovetincture
Summary: There was a part of Sam that worried he was making too much of it—that years spent holding college up as the holy grail had twisted it into a place more mythological than real. There was a part that worried he’d gotten his hopes up too high, despite all his careful tending, and he’d be woefully disappointed.That isn’t what happens at all.Going to Stanford feels a lot like coming home.
Relationships: Jessica Moore/Sam Winchester
Series: The Shape of Light [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1843720
Comments: 4
Kudos: 40





	Coming Home

There was a part of Sam that worried he was making too much of it—that years spent holding college up as the holy grail had twisted it into a place more mythological than real. There was a part that worried he’d gotten his hopes up too high, despite all his careful tending, and he’d be woefully disappointed.

That isn’t what happens at all.

College is exactly the breath of fresh air he’d always dreamed it would be, like surfacing from the dark after holding his breath for too long. It’s perfect.

He loves all of it, even the annoying parts everyone else finds easy to hate. He loves the cramped, sparsely furnished dorm room with its tiny twin beds and built-in shelves, like an earthquake might demolish anything that isn’t nailed down. He loves the dining hall and its sleek modern art lines, loves the particular  _ way _ he feels out of place, like something feral coming in from the cold. Most of all, he loves the way he stays in one place for all of it, night after night, morning after morning after morning.

Despite a lifetime of muddling, habitual prayer, Sam’s never given a whole hell of a lot of thought to heaven. The concept always seemed a little far-fetched, even to him. Even seeing the things he’s seen. Anyway, it seemed morbid to dwell when death was an actual possibility he lived shoulder-to-shoulder with every day of his life—his own death, Dean’s, Dad’s—they were all well-known rooms in the halls of his mind.

So, no, Sam had never given much thought to heaven, but if he had, he thinks it might look like the Green Library. He thinks it must smell like this—like history and books, like the smell of the last dregs of summer wafting in through the door.

* * *

He expects that sometime, somehow, all the little things will stop delighting him. He waits for the other shoe to drop, waits to feel annoyed like everyone else does when he’s up all night cramming for midterms. When he peels himself out of bed, bleary-eyed and drinking the bitter dregs of last night’s coffee because he’s too broke to stop at a coffee shop on the way into class.

He waits, but it never quite happens.

He’s out of money, and that’s a problem. A full ride will only get you so far—in the building, but not with a full stomach—but Sam’s resourceful, and he’s always been good at making do. That, at least, is in his blood.

He applies for a job at a fancy cafe-slash-restaurant a few blocks away from campus, taking a certain feral delight in signing up for honest work, just like everyone else. He bluffs his way into the job, lying through his teeth and giving them his roommate’s phone number as a reference.

_ How are your knife skills, on a scale from one to ten? _

_ Great. I’d say… a solid seven. _

_ Have you cooked French food before? _

_ Yes, ma’’am. Some Italian, too. _ He figures somewhere, somehow, boiling dry noodles counts for that.

The interviewer jots down his answers, holds out a hand, and promises to be in touch. Miracle of miracles, he gets the job.

The work’s not as hard as he thought it might be, coming from someone with zero kitchen experience to speak of. His knife skills, it turns out, are not a solid seven. They’re barely a two on a good day—being able to knife a werewolf through the heart apparently doesn’t make you good at slicing fruit paper-thin for garnishes.

Still, one of the sous chefs takes pity on him and shows him how to dice an onion without, A) taking forever, or B) slicing his fingers off.

He learns new things, little facts that he files away in a similar but separate mental box from all the hunting lore he’d picked up as a kid. Wine glasses need to be wiped dry with paper towels— _ paper towels, _ not rags—to avoid water spots. Onions can be sliced a few days in advance as long as they’re floated in clean water changed every twelve hours, but sliced tomatoes need to be tossed daily. However much pancake batter you think you’ll need to prep, you need more. Like, a lot more.

He learns things. After a few weeks, he’s passably good at his job. He gets by.

Even the social aspect of things is easier to wrap his mind around than he’d figured it might be. Hanging out with pro cooks, it turns out, is not all that different from hanging out with hunters. They all have their war stories, scars and burns that they show off from this or that job. They run on caffeine, booze, and bravado. Someone’s probably holding cocaine, everybody hurts, and nobody sleeps. It’s weirdly familiar. Even feels a little bit like home.

* * *

Sam thought he’d miss his family. Well—he thought he’d miss Dean. As much as he wanted to leave the life behind, he never wanted to leave  _ Dean _ behind. It’s just that the one comes with the other, and he couldn’t  _ live _ like that anymore. He couldn’t, no more than he could breathe underwater or up and fly.

Dean thought it was a choice, but then Dean’s never understood. Not this, anyway. Dean’s not like him like this, broken like this. Dean’s not straining toward any scrap of sky he can find, aching for the light; he’s fine growing right where he’s planted.

As long as Sam’s known him, Dean’s been infuriatingly sure. Not sure of anything in particular, just  _ sure, _ as a state of being. Sam hates it and loves it. He scoffs and rolls his eyes, and he wants it so badly for himself.

It feels—if he’s honest with himself, it feels fucking good to be away from all that, to not have to even think about unraveling the Gordian knot of what exactly it is that he feels about Dean.

It’s not that he doesn’t miss Dean, exactly. He feels him like a hole in his heart in all the moments caught between. When he’s drinking from a water fountain and there’s no one there to slap his head into it like a fucking punk. When he hears the strains of AC/DC drifting from a room down the hall. When he reads about a rash of disappearances in a town to the east, and he knows exactly what joke Dean would make about it—Demi Moore. Patrick Swayze. Ghost.

It’s not that Sam doesn’t miss him.

It’s just that he doesn’t have the time to do a whole lot of missing anything.

The first few months of college pass in a haze. Between work, classes, and homework, he’s constantly moving, constantly on the go, and that’s how he likes it. His friends (he has  _ friends) _ all think he’s some kind of super-genius freak, but the truth is that juggling a part-time job and a full course load is nothing compared to loading into the back of the car every few weeks, shuffling from town to town with his transcript shoved in the back of the cleanest backpack he owned. It’s nothing to playing catchup again and again and again.

He falls into bed satisfied and exhausted, night after night. He’s asleep before his head hits the pillow, long before his thoughts of home, such as it was, can even make a cameo.

He doesn’t call.

He goes to parties and hits a bong for the first time—something silly, something dumb. Something so much the 18 years of age that he actually is that it burns. His whole insides feel fizzy after the smoke really hits. He’s coughing, heavy-eyed, lids dropped to half-mast. He’s smiling dopey, the whole room tilting ever so gently on an unseen axis. The light-up pink flamingo lamp in the corner looks so, so bright.

The room is sleepy and warm, people talking in hushed tones and the music playing low. The smell of nag champa twines through the air, mingling with the smoky-sweet smell of herb. Sam is so gone. He feels like he’s made of lead, his limbs dripping slowly toward the ground. He’s comfortable and honeyed, heavy and tired, and he couldn’t move from the couch if he tried.

He rubs his hands over the couch, mystified by the texture of suede beneath his skin.

If something attacked him right here, right now, he would die. There’s something luxurious in being so irresponsible. He thinks this must be how some people feel about champagne, how they feel about diamonds, how they feel about  _ Hawaii. _ He’s high as shit and unarmed, and this, more than anything, makes him feel like he’s finally made it.

He wants to tell Dean about this feeling, and then he remembers that he can’t. He gets as far as taking his phone from his pocket, gets as far as fingers on keys. He scrolls to the name. He watches it light up.

Someone drops something in the kitchen. There’s the peal of breaking glass and a sudden burble of laughter. A half a dozen childish  _ ooohs _ from the kitchen. Someone says the word “party foul.” Sam fights the absolute gravitational pull of couch lock and goes to see what happened—a rubbernecker like everyone else.

The beer bottle’s cracked open on the tile floor, prismatic amber glass making strange angles. Everything’s sticky, and their host says  _ don’t move. _ He’s never been good at listening, so he fetches a handful of wadded paper towels and meets her on the floor.

Thanks, she says. Her name is Jess, she says. Sticky-sweet beer soaks into Sam’s black-socked feet, and he smiles the easy, slow smile of the stoned and innocent.

My name is Sam, he says. He doesn’t call.

The moment breaks and bends, and they drift back toward their respective corners of the party. Sam keeps her in the periphery of his vision, keeps her in the corner of his mind. She doesn’t take up space the way Dean does, but she’s pretty and sweet, and her hair smells like flowers.

He watches her smile around the lip of a beer bottle, laughing at someone else’s joke, and he feels his lips tugging up at the edges too.

They find each other on the front porch of the house later. It’s past midnight, the party winding down as stragglers find beds for the night—their own or someone else’s. Sam isn’t tired, hasn’t got a mind to sleep. He feels just perfect—at peace a way he rarely is, and he wants to enjoy it for as long as he’s allowed. It’s cold outside—not properly cold, but chilly. What some people would call  _ sweater weather. _

Sam’s still a little bit drunk and a little bit stoned, a little fuzzy around the edges. The world feels a little kinder than it usually does. They lean against the rounded pillars that prop up the porch, sitting on the stoop and gazing at the stars up in the sky. Somewhere down the road, a car hums by. The house shines warm and bright behind them, promising humid, sticky respite from the dark.

It’s peaceful out here, and Sam gets a little bit lost in his head.

He thinks Jess will say something—that’s what you do with strangers, especially strangers at parties. He’s not looking forward to it, not looking forward to losing the little slice of peace he’s found.

The minutes pass, and she says nothing. They sit side by side, arms prickling with the cold, and watch the moon rise.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on [Twitter](http://twitter.com/lovetincture).


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